KINGSTON, R.I. — March 27, 2018 — Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and an autism activist, will deliver the keynote address as part of the 2018 Northeast Decision Sciences Annual Conference in Providence, which runs from April 12 through 14.
Grandin’s talk, “The Woman Who thinks Like a Cow,” will be presented, Friday, April 13, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Providence Renaissance Hotel. Her presentation is sponsored by URI’s College of Business. Dinner tickets are $85/each and can be purchased at https://nedsi.net/temple-grandin-event. At this time you must register for dinner to attend the event.
“This is an academic conference, and we are seeing more autism spectrum students coming into college,” said Doug Hales, associate dean and professor of supply chain management at URI’s College of Business and program chair of the conference. “I became very interested in autism and education because my grand nephew has autism.
“Some people don’t know how to work with students with autism. So we thought Temple Grandin, a renowned speaker, researcher and person with autism would be a great person to speak to our group. Autism issues permeate society so we are inviting others from Rhode Island to join us for this powerful talk by Professor Grandin.”
Reporters interested in covering the event should contact Dave Lavallee, URI Marketing and Communications, at 401-874-5862 or dlavallee@uri.edu.
According to her website, Grandin did not talk until she was 3-and-a-half years old. She was fortunate to get early speech therapy, and her teachers also taught her how to wait and take turns when playing board games. Grandin was mainstreamed into a normal kindergarten at age 5.
Oliver Sacks wrote in the foreword of Thinking in Pictures that her first book, Emergence: Labeled Autistic, was “unprecedented because there had never before been an inside narrative of autism.” Sacks profiled Grandin in his best-selling book Anthropologist on Mars. Grandin was voted one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 most influential people in the world in 2010.
Grandin became a prominent author and speaker on autism and animal behavior. Today she is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She also has a successful career consulting on both livestock handling equipment design and animal welfare. She has been featured on NPR (National Public Radio) and a BBC Special – “The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow”.
She has also appeared on national TV shows such as Larry King Live, 20/20, 60 Minutes, and Fox and Friends, and she delivered a 2010 TED talk. Articles about Grandin have appeared in Time magazine, The New York Times, Discover Magazine, Forbes and USA Today. HBO made an Emmy Award-winning movie about her life and she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.
Her website says that when she was young, she was considered weird and she was teased and bullied in high school. She found friends only by participating in activities where there was a shared interest such as horses, electronics, or model rockets. A science teacher was an important mentor who encouraged her interest in science, and when she had a new goal of becoming a scientist, she had a reason to study. Today half the cattle in the United States are handled in facilities she has designed.
The Northeast Decision Sciences Institute Conference attracts professors and researchers from 19 countries and 66 universities. The institute holds an annual regional meeting each spring that features presentations of original research papers; Ph.D. and new faculty development seminars; a placement service; case writing; and other interesting innovations in the fields of accounting; business education; finance; human resource management; management, management information systems, expert systems and information technology; organizational behavior; operations management; strategic management; and supply chain management, among others.